Getting people interested in the idea of playing a roleplaying game isn’t hard, according to veteran game designer Avery Alder (The Quiet Year, Monsterhearts). In an era when celebrity actual plays and pop culture references are making big waves, there is a growing audience of people who would love to dip their toes into the hobby. Until, that is, they realize just how steep the learning curve and time commitment are.
“Roleplaying games often demand that first-time players read a whole book, learn intricate rules, design their own character… all before sitting down to a session that takes an entire evening to play through,” Alder points out. “That’s a huge ask for someone who doesn’t even know if they like this sort of thing yet!” Going for Broke is her way of bridging that gap.
Going for Broke is a fast-paced sitcom roleplaying game about a collective house that’s scrambling to put together enough money to pay their rent. It ditches the strange-looking dice and complicated math of other games, opting for a simple coin-flip mechanic that aims to keep sessions quick and chaotic.
The game uses a set of 12 character cards, each representing a potential roommate in the house. Choose your roommate, choose an episode premise, and dive in. Each episode opens with an argument about how to deal with a huge expense, which spirals into two ill-conceived plots. Ultimately, one succeeds, the other fails, and we’re right back where we started: with the house barely scraping by.
“I wanted a game that you could fit in your back pocket, play in less than an hour, and easily pitch to non-gamers,” said Alder. “Sitcoms and roleplaying games both lean heavily on well-defined story structures, making it an easy fit.”
Going For Broke is releasing as a pack of 17 cards (12 roommate cards, 5 reference cards) in a lightweight sleeve box, with rules available for free online. The crowdfunding campaign is primarily set up to fund the first print run.
While most roleplaying games have rules for how characters grow and change over time, and advice to make sure that choices made in the game have meaningful and lasting consequences, Going for Broke operates on sitcom logic. “Every episode has an A Plot and a B Plot. The moment that one succeeds, the other fails – or vice versa! The episode ends once these two plots cancel one another out, resetting everything for the next episode.”
The game is currently being crowdfunded on Backerkit. Upon funding, it will be self-published through Alder’s Buried Without Ceremony imprint, joining a catalog that includes The Quiet Year, Monsterhearts, Dream Askew, and others.
Images via Avery Alder
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